Deal maker, or deal breaker
Everybody wants to be #1 in the search engines; however, being #1 doesn’t guarantee success. It doesn’t hurt and it is a good start. But what happens when your website gets pulled up in the search engines and a potential customer reads the description of your website and because of it – turns away? How much business are you getting vs. how much business are you losing?
The truth is, it happens all the time. Just because you made the top ten list in Google, doesn’t mean that the description you give is compelling enough for someone to want to visit your website.
In the image above you have the ‘title’ & ‘url’ of your website and then you have the ‘description’. Your ‘Title’ tells me what our products or services are, who you are or (quickly) what you do; however, in your description, you have approximately 24 words – or 144 characters – no more than the size of a tweet – to schmooze me and compel me to action. #Website designs’ that are well formatted, and well formed, are foundational to your ultimate success in relevant search engine results on the Internet.”
SEO secrets are all over the Internet. And every Internet marketing service believes that they hold the “KEY” to fast results. But are they lasting? But fast results don’t always mean successful results.
Truth be told, there is only one ‘key’ that will continue to give quality, relevant search engine results when all others have failed. Have you guessed it yet? I gave you your first clue in the opening paragraph. That is right – a good description.
Website designs that are well formatted, and well formed, are foundational to your ultimate success in relevant search engine listings. And let me add this, they MUST be integrated in your Internet marketing strategy early or all of your SEO tactics and efforts will ultimately fail.
Well formatted website design is not a SECRET – it is common sense.
Step 1: Make your description no more than 27 words or 160 characters. Not much bigger than a tweet.
Why?
Because when you do a search in a search engine, they DO NOT DISPLAY any more text than approximately twenty seven words. Other description text is wasted, so don’t bother. In this case more is not better.
Step 2: Make your description compelling. The description metatag is slightly more detailed than your ‘title’ tag. They need to compliment each other but not be exactly the same.
Both your ‘title’ and your ‘description’ work in harmony to give the searcher a “REASON” to click on your link to get more information.
***** Keep in mind that Google will not use your ‘description tag’ if it is not relevant to the page it is on. If Google feels that your description doesn’t match the relevancy of the page content – they will write their own description of your web page based on the content of the page – and it may not always be pretty. Yahoo does use your description tag (if you have one). If you don’t, they will use the first available text which may be something like: “Hi, how are ya? Welcome to my fabulous website and great products. Take a look around and if you have any questions, give us a call.” My only question at this point is: “What is your website all about since your description failed to tell me anything.” *****
Step 3: Use one keyword or phrase in your description. It can’t hurt, but remember – don’t over do it.
Step 4: Make sure each page of your website has a UNIQUE description of what you can expect to find on that specific page.
The more specific you are, the better your response will be.
Here is what a good description metatag might look like:
<meta name=”description” content=””#Website Design” & “#Internet Marketing Services” – empowering your business for the next technological wave!” />
